Pretty Little Make Believe

Hey everyone! I'm sorry I haven't responded to comments, yet! My friend of 38 years was diagnosed with Stage-4 cancer, last week, so I've been scrambling between Austin and Indy to try and get things like hospice and stuff for her children set up where they are taken care of during this terrible time! I want you to know that I responded to about half of the entries, myself, but had to settle for reading the back end! I'm sorry if you didn't hear from me, and I'm sorry I haven't thanked you all for the wonderful words on last week's piece! I keep running out of time, but I doubt my life is any different from anyone else's. I was SO impressed with the entries! You guys are rocking it! Here's to continued success! <3

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They say that a woman is not only 97% more likely to be killed by someone she knows, but that that someone is usually a person they love or who “loves” them.

In a tiny window, in an aluminum door, looking out over the garden, all the roots had gone gray.

It happened that way, year after year, as she and Ella sat in the galley way, working on their needlepoint, or getting bottlenecked in the process that was putting up last season’s beans.

They’d look out the slightly larger window at the sink, Ella washing, her drying, dreaming of next year. How they’d expand the harvest -- the cukes and the zucchini, because they just hadn’t gotten enough of their pickles and bread; or the carrots and the radishes they enjoyed right there on the ground. There was the kohlrabi and the Swiss chard and cabbages bigger than both their heads. It was something to see.

Speaking of seeing, Alden’s eyes fluttered and she rocked in her chair. She was almost sure she was going to be sick. For the first time in what had to be hours, if not days, she was happy for the bindings at her chest. And if that wasn’t the stupidest thing she’d ever thought, she wasn’t sure what was! The surprise of it brought a laugh from somewhere deep inside, the sound of it brassy in the trailer.

She’d been bleeding since early morning. If not this day, the one before. The same knife used to cut her was still sitting on the end table. She’d watched it there, her blood moving from Rosé red to deep, dark claret, and then finally a crusty merlot. Hey, she liked wine okay? It wasn’t like she had a problem.

It was just that life got a little monotonous, here and there, and sometimes Ella had been on her third, or her fifth, or her twenty-eighth retelling of whatever story she was obsessing on, so... if a glass or a bottle or a case of wine got her through, who was she hurting, anyway?

She was still perfectly soused when Ella had flipped the light on in her room, and told her to come quick. She hadn't passed out, or anything. She wasn't a blackout drunk! Well, usually.

It's just that sometimes she got a little sleepy. An Ambien or two, and she'd wake up, refreshed in the morning (or slightly hung over by noon), but Ella had never complained. As long as she got her Lean Cuisine and an icy Pepsi by Days of Our Lives time, Ella was as happy as could be!

She wasn't that night, though. Her face was drawn into a strange shape-- something that crossed between terror and realization --so Alden had come running! It was bit more of a zagged stagger, Alden holding her temples where the liquor throbbed like hoofbeat, but... she was up, so she considered it a win!

And that's when Ella had cold-cocked her. Not two feet outside her bedroom door and the path they'd carefully carved for themselves-- their newspaper-magazine maze like a project of its own --and down she went! She remembered laying there looking at Kennedy and a stylish Jackie O before the lights went out. And that was... Tuesday maybe.

When she woke, when the bindings stirred and she felt the world all wobbly, she'd been dreaming of the Turn of the Century, when the first oil wells were being drilled in Titusville, and Pittsburg was still pouring steel. Back when oil seemed limitless, and fossil fuels were drifting on languid barges between the Gulf Coast and the Midwest.

Somewhere, buried in high heaps on grandma’s old green and pink loveseat probably sat the good news that came with Lincoln and abolition, Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, probably some Enron and Nixon. Somewhere in their packed living room, Olivier North was apologizing, as two egotistical bastards baited Kim Jung Un (not that he didn’t deserve it, tiny little despot!).

Somewhere…. somewhere there was an issue of Time taking women to task for their overt sexuality, while Terry Richardson was probably shooting their pictures. Alden had never really taken the time to look at what they'd been collecting. It was just easier to deal with the mess of it all, instead of burning the trailer to the ground.

She was reminded, only briefly, as a new wave of nausea settled into pain, of that scene in the movie Brazil. The one with the tornado of newspapers that quickly swallowed a bewildered Jonathan Pryce. A trailer park, and fifty tons of bullshit stacked far and wide, and all she ever secretly wished for was Mother Nature to come settle their debt. With the here and now, here and fucking now!, she realized how foolish she'd been! If wishes were fishes," she thought, then threw up in her lap.

Ella had been gone for a while. So long, Alden decided peeing probably wasn't as embarrassing as it sounded, considering the strain everything was on her system. Pee now, she thought, or forever hold your peas. Ella had been saying that to her since before she was old enough to understand the homophone. Her bladder thanked her, but sitting there in it, bleeding out, while her homicidal, dementia-suffering grandmother was on the loose, wasn't all that awesome.

The bigger problem was the mice. If you'd ever caught an episode of Hoarders, you understood. No one could live like that and not draw critters. And those critters had been skittering around her ropes for a while, now, drawing closer and closer to what they were looking for. She wondered if it was better being eaten by your own dog (Clyde Bruckman didn't seem to think so!).

The room was drawing prismatic at the edges. Sort of a bubblistic wibble, and Alden tried to blink it away. Pins and needles had set in where her wrists were bound and her legs were tied. It wouldn't be long before she stopped feeling things all-together. In the hazy rays of whatever this was -- last light -- she wondered who'd come take care of Ella. If they'd lock her away? She worried the family would find all the bottles in the aftermath. The ones she'd squirreled away. They'd blame her for sure! They'd always thought she was taking advantage, using Ella's social security as an easy out. Maybe, now, this wouldn't look so easy.

Alden felt about as carved out as the corn husks gamboling across the porch. The sound of them on the wood made her think of Halloween. It was coming up, pretty soon, and she and Ella had already made their pilgrimage to Big Lots to pick up their Glow-In-The-Dark Reese's. But there'd be no kids for them, this year. No laughter at all the adorable costumes, the fun making taffy apples. Nothing would ever be the same.

Alden's heart kept tripping in her chest, like somewhere it had grown two left feet. She wondered if she was as gray as the garden, slowly changing for another season. Would that happen here? Could she reincarnate as an apple blossom or the purple and the pink in the helix of a shell? Could she return, unscathed, as a Wall Street Tycoon or a Swedish model? This couldn't be the end. Not here, surrounded by all this dust and junk.

But that's exactly what it was. And when the family came, Alden was no longer there to care.